files. Lord Ronin is planning Notes From Meeting of on DL-ing this for our 21V June/01 ce testing and a demo. He did V The Open: 7:00pm DL the 4bit files. But they were not ready for viewing by meeting time. He is NeiDSletter: Approved collecting the GoDot files and new E.P.S. files that are Chancellor: A reminder about elections being put up at Arndt s site. next meeting, was met with groans from As well as helping a little bit the officers. The Voice of the ACU.G JULY 200ICE ISSUE fl for the newsletter. For the past two weeks by #30. who has also been making manuals Amiga. Inc. ran a very limited time offer and walkthroughs with wrong is write and for the Amiga. Party Pack. This included Geos, helping future C« users. These when the Amiga. S.D.K. and sample games and finished and made into sda files and put on applications for the new Amiga. D.E. system the board. Gained primarily from Project It also includes an offer for a. $100 discount 64 web site. coupon off an AmigaQne PPC/1200 or a. free copy of Amiga. OS 4.0 fr 4.2. These ran for The PRG group is almost finished with $99 each. There is a version that runs on the first of the three C.B.M. books on top of Linux, another for on the Windblown programming. Discussed was where we system. The AmigaQne mother board has would like to go after the books are been slightly delayed. However actual finished. Game creation, sprites music. mother boards were seen at the Amiga Kick Start Show. According to Amiga, OS 4.0 is Geos S-I.G- has a new member #22- Who moving along pretty good, and it along has factory copies of 1.2 and 1.3. just with the AmigaQne should be out later this starting on learning the enjoyment of summer." Geos. Many lessons and discussions held on how to use the GeoWrite and GeoPaint prgs. Editor: Lots to say and a little space to say it this issue. As I don't know at this DlSCUSSlon: Newcomer game 14 disks sides time how much the Maurice article will plus new and old sid file disks. Not NTSC take in space. So pardon for the more compatible and in 40 tracks. The Voice of the ACU.G JULY 2001CE ISSUE Click Here Software Co is currently this business is targeted at Commodore finalizing a deal with Creative Micro owners and you can imagine what the Designs in order to take over the licensing, finance people think. However, with some manufacturing, and distribution of their of my own money and with the help of entire Commodore-related product line. We another individual, I'm able to come up intend to keep these products available for with a good portion of what I need to finish m any years to come in addition to this deal. Presently, I'm lacking about continued support of all the existing $10,000 to complete the deal. I'm trying to products through new and exciting work this deal in a way that I don't get upgrades. The CMD staff is taking the 4th myself into a financial mess. The only way of July week off and when they return this takeover can happen is if I make it a from vacation, I will be making a trip to successful and profitable venture. So far, East Longmeadow, Massachusetts to spend a I'm OK. Another idea I have to raise some week learning all the tricks involved in capital is to announce some of the new getting each CMD product produced and products I plan to introduce soon. If I can running. Following that, I will be pre-sell enough of these, I would have the returning back to Michigan with a truck remaining amount of money that I need to and trailer full of anything and finish the purchase. In exchange, everyone everything that CMD has that is will get a nice new product that will truly Commodore-related.And I mean be enjoyed. EVERYTHING! CMD is getting out completely. Their current business simply THE NEW HD-D0S I'm doing an upgrade to doesn't provide them with enough time in the HD-D0S and it will contain many new the day to continue producing the features. Remember the talk about the Commodore related equipment. While I'm at print spooling9 That s what the auxiliary CMD, I will also be helping to fill some of port is for. You can plug in your the orders that were taken during the Commodore-ready printer or printer final two weeks prior to June 4th. However, interface into the auxiliary port and the the bulk of the orders will be filled by HD can act as if it were the device 4 myself at my shop in Michigan once I'm all printer. The HD intercepts the printer data set up for production. when an application tries to print. The HD will then store the data into the printer I have a 13,000 square foot building here partition. It will then either send the data that includes a machine shop and metal immediately to the printer or save it for fabrication area. I can set up equipment later printing. There will be several here to fabricate the special cases needed configuration modes. For instance, the for products such as the RamLink. This incoming data can be sent out as-is. In this capability will save me from having to hire case, a program such as TWS might be an outside fabrication shop to do the work. sending data as if the printer were in This also means that the RamLink will Epson mode. How can a hard drive do all remain in production since the per-unit this? CMD made this possible by putting a cost of the cases will be lower. The same 64K computer inside the HD case. Yes, will hold true for the HD, FD, and SCPU there's something very similar to a cases. CMD always had the cases built by Commodore64 sitting inside that case. If it one outside shop and then shipped to had a video chip, think what we could do another shop for painting. The whole with it! Some users are presently process including the baked on paint finish connecting a CD-ROM to the HD, but special can be performed "in-house" now. Now for programs are needed to handle the data the only problem I've got right now. I've transfers. To make things easier, the new been trying to get the financing for this HD-DQS will incorporate a new partition acquisition. However, the two finance type called "CD ROM". Just create a CD ROM companies I've tried have not been helpful. partition and when you switch to that The computer industry is obviously not as partition, you will be able to access the CD sound as it was a couple of years ago, and ROM drive just like you would any they are leary of it. Add to that the fact partition on the hard drive. Plug in a second cd rom drive and create a partition The Voice of the ACU.G JULY 200ICE ISSUE for that one too! There will be other won t get your order shipped in 24 hours, features added to the new DOS such as the so please be patient with me. HD-Zip drive ability to recognize a disk change for (complete) $299 plus $15 shipping HD-DOS those who have installed Iomega Zip drives upgrade (for existing units) $40 plus $4 into their units. You will no longer have shipping HD-Zip kit without mechanism to partition all your disks the same way (includes HD-DOS upgrade) $55 plus $4 and you will not have to press the reset shipping HD-Zip kit with mechanism price button during a disk change either.When a not yet determined. The above prices will disk change is sensed, the DOS will be guaranteed on pre-sold orders. If I automatically re-read the partition table determine at the time of production that I from the new disk just like the FD drive can lower the prices, then I will refund does when you insert a new disk. The new the difference. Please send your order to: HD-DOS will include a new BOOT ROM which Maurice Randall% Click Here Software is very easy to install and a new DOS disk Co426 Sumpter St P.O. Box 606 Charlotte which will also include some new utilities. MI 46813 You can call me or email me with I'm estimating this upgrade will be sold any question you'd like to: PH: (517) for about $40. 543-5202 [email protected] A big thank you in advance...-Maurice THE NEW HD-ZIP DRIVE Another nice new product will be an official production HD-Zip drive. For us Commodore users, this makes much more sense than having a hard drive with gigabytes of storage. You'd be surprised at how much stuff you Now about this issue. As you can see rr there are some changes. I am using X I / u u some new fonts for Perfect Print. get low on space, just get another Zip disk! Ones that I found on a website. Or keep different projects on different Zip Won t be able to see what they disks. The HD-Zip drive will also include really look like, till printed. the new HD-DOS mentioned above. My hope is that they will give a clearer reading for our members and HD-ZIP KITS Do you already have a CMD for our exchanges. HD? How would you like to put a Zip drive Announcements: in it? I will be selling a kit in two forms, A pleasent vaction to *22. As he with or without the actual Zip drive visits family in Calif. We hope to connect mechanism. The kits will also include the him with Civic as he will be in the area for new HD-DOS mentioned above. The kit will a couple of months. give you the necessary bracket and screws, Amiga users: Recently I picked up a a template for cutting the front panel, a collection of Amiga disks. Along with some new front panel decal, and an instruction m anuals and what appears to be a device sheet.Currently, I can only estimate what for connecting a SCSI. Members can view the selling price of these kits will be. Most the items at tne Kibbutz. Testing is going likely, the kit without the Zip drive on this month. mechanism will be somewhere around $55. (remember, that includes the new HD-DOS) Scope out Data Stores 2-3 for RPGs and 1.91 for the manuals. MY REQUEST AND MY PROMISE Once Data Store 1.2 has the C« Hacking Mags full again, I'm putting out a request for of information on the C« anyone interested in the above products to go ahead and send me your order. Or Remember that this month is the time for maybe you're still thinking about Elections and our 23rd anniversary. Party ordering a SuperCPU, or an FD drive, or is on hold till the new shop is opened. Cat whatever. Go ahead and send me an order Box Cake is a must for the party. S^m iga Section The Tally Ho! & C o m i c s I Issue 23-JuCy, 200Ice Eyetech’s Updated AmigaOne have slipped. Although this has also meant A Technical Report Timeline that the end time for hardware delivery has In a message to the AmigaOne Maillist Updated 27 June 2001 moved back actual progress has, so far, about SCSI on the Amiga, Fleecy had this It’s now several months since this timeline been ahead of plan with the development to say: was last updated as most of the day-to-day currently looking like it will come in at “As you are all asking so many questions, news items have been posted to the less than the estimate for elapsed I will post the Amiga internal report on http://www.yahoogroups.com/ engineering time. As reported earlier in SCSI - we-didn’t just pick SCRIPTS group/amigaone mailing list. However lots the AmigaOne FAQ’s, beta testers will not because it sounded cool;-)” of things have happened since we now be needed for the hardware which is launched the AmigaOne project which being independantly tested/validated as C&C&C&-C&-G&-C&0&C&-C&C9-C& have had an influence on the specification development progresses. AmigaOne SCSI standards of the final product and therefore the As most people probably know, timetable leading up to delivery. Continental Europe (where most of the The main change has undoubtedly AmigaOne and OS4.0 development is Fleecy has also asked me to recommend a been the decision by Amiga to use the being carried out) closes in August, PCI SCSI card or chipset on which to current Amiga OS as the basis for a home making it a bad time for beta testing and standardise, and I’m fairly sure I know the server solution and as an alternative (to the associated feedback. As you’ll see right ones to pick. I’ve been a SCSI Windows and Linux) hosting environment below, application software/OS4.0 beta enthusiast since 1987, and written drivers for the Amiga DE. test boards are therefore now scheduled for (very) dumb and smart controllers. I do This has meant that when it is first for release at the beginning of September. understand the options and the issues, as launched the AmigaOne 1200 will be a Manufacture of production I’ll show. We should standardise on an substantially improved product to what AmigaOne1200 boards will now start in ‘NCR SCSI scripts’ processor, for the was originally envisaged. The majority of mid September, and be released for following reasons. These are low-cost the improvements come from Amiga’s distribution as soon as OS4.0 is signed off high-performance single-chip PCI bus- commitment to develop OS4.0 specifically for release in early October. mastering SCSI controllers. They are to run on the AmigaOne-1200 at launch. Timeline summary: widely available in SCSI 2 FAST and This is far more than the ‘fixed’ version of Mk 2 PCB production and testing - Ultra/SCSI-3 versions, originally from OS3.9 that was originally envisaged Complete NCR then Symbios, now a brand of LSI (pending the development of the native logic, http://www.lsilogic.com/. There is a PPC Amiga DE implementation that was All major custom chip logic building good OEM support program there - originally planned). The new OS4.0 will block development and testing - Complete another reason for come with a high performance file system, chosing this rather than an Adaptec virtual memory, high performance PPC- CPU module design - Complete proprietary part, for example - and they native TCP/IP stack, 1GB main memory encourage people to buy either boards support, UDMA IDE and SCSI and Custom chip PCI development - Complete with chips on (e.g. from lots of firms in ethemet drivers and Picasso96 2D China, Korea and Taiwan) OR the chips retargetable drivers for VooDoo3 Custom chip memory and CPU controller themselves for integration (as on PCI/AGP and Matrox G450 PCI/AGP & integration - June/July Commodore’s A4000T) so programming G550 AGP only graphics cards. and electronic specs are both good and Warp3D/Mesa 3D drivers will also be Bootstrap, flashrom maintenance and easy to get. Hence they are widely shipped with the first release of OS4.0. basic drivers implementation - supported with free and compatible Sound card (with Paula emulation), July/August drivers, and as close to a commodity as USB (keyboard and mouse) drivers will controller chips get. follow as downloadable updates - ie you OS4.0 build and 68K emulator You can buy PCI cards in this wont have to wait until OS4.2 (which we porting/testing - July/August architecture from ASUS, Diamond don’t expect to ship until mid 2002) for Multimedia, DTC, Intraserver, Lomas these facilities. Application software beta tester systems Data, SW Technology, Topsys and Tyan, The whole AmigaOne-1200 project shipped - End August/Start September among others. is suddenly much bigger and very much Each offer versions that match better as a result The small downside AmigaOne 1200 boards into production - several variants of the SCSI standard - however is that during the several weeks Mid September unsurprisingly, as the software drivers and leading up to the OS4.x announcement (at PCI connector stay almost the same, and St Louis at the beginning of April) and Application software & OS4.0 beta test only the integrated controller/interface more particularly since then, we and sign off - End September chip and SCSI sockets need to change Amiga Inc have had to redirect much of (basically). our efforts to carefully defining, planning AmigaOne-1200 boards and 084.0 There are lots of chips in the ‘SCSI and allocating tasks and responsibilities to available to dealers - 1st week October scripts’ family and they all have a similar OS4.0 development and integration with programming interface, which I’m very the Al-1200. The extra work involved has ©2001 Eyetech Ltd. familiar and happy with as both a user and also, inevitably, meant that timeframes □aoo ~o ^oora^oaoga a programmer. AmigaOne SCSI Standards: Chips in this family include the 'lMCagt Qretn SpeciaCiPiitf out Section Issue 23 ■ tPage 1 53C710 used in the Warp Engine, CSA Magnum and A4091 (Zorro 3 cards and accelerators - I’ve written drivers down to the metal for these, in Amiga Qdos) which are SCSI 2 FAST. These were the fastest, lowest-overhead SCSI 2 controllers for Amigas, and in my experience very tolerant of cable and termination mistakes that clobber rivals. This feature is trademarked as ‘TolerANT’ and involves the controller monitoring the bounce on the I/O lines and tuning the line drivers accordingly. It w orks.:-) The Cyberstorm 3 and Cyberstorm PPC were based on a Symbios clone of the NCR53C770 Ultra SCSI script processor. Phase 5 S ^ b f l n a Online by xicAmcwgp-—~ C2Q00 "N o interruptions tnis time” abandoned the Elonex FAS216 they Usually fm prean had inherited from the Fastlane Z3 Com for fable ‘talking to rnorc. + o 03 j u * *- ptfoplc,c^erv online. - cards and used in Mark 1 and 2 I l i k e falfcing with Cyberstorms, and so the Mark 3 was tHough - a lot. faster and more reliable, with lower I s CPU overhead than earlier models, even on ‘narrow’ SCSI drives. The main snag of the Mark 3 SCSI was that it only shipped with wide (68 pin) connections and required expensive connectors and cables to work with cheap and common SCSI 2 gear. It’s important that we Online by 2000 "N o , n o t THAT Springfield " should offer a choice of SCSI 2 FAST ” ------T If'* obout t h------e Same 'P ar' and ‘Ultra Sprin^ieW T as iVi half J/ I me, tv t- i drove h e r e J way betw een Colu»v»bu^ Wide SCSI 3' (pick your labels:-) DtsiyfonT "fHAT 5prlnqfieiif? ■A 7 l i v e in controllers so people can use their — y J T ¥% existing equipment (scanners, DATs, ZIPs as well as intelligent fixed drives) with low cost, and those who have or want later ‘wide’ gear can use it, without us having to fp^m ore or 1 w«^h we'd t'olol c a c i n > write new drivers. | d i d yOU other befoci now. Ue l«'ve fc»are/y «vtqr-e fh o n a . The most basic PCI version of J |jf / l i v e «n Spri'nc?^«?ld/2 this is the 53C810, which I use (in the SymBios remix) in my Devbox. The chip has the same advantages but even S d b f l t l S Online by 2000 "International stalkers” higher integration as it drops onto PCI ll you w h at, »»nc« »t*'S not -fixr out oP yot>r* rather than the CPU bus or - via glue - way, why doW4- yoU rollou, to Zorro 3. However SCSI 2 FAST is a back "to my O part • SO 1 Cc.tn ?hOU/ minimum, these days; raw IDE can ycH/ arot/Hcl 7 outrun it, though not if you have several drives active at a time. There are ultra wideand differential versions of the PCI chips, too. These are some of them - there are probably others: - 53C810A: Fast SCSI-2 (10 Mb/s) - 53C815: Fast SCSI-2 S d b f l l l d Online by — ^2000 "The freak flag flies" - 53C825: Fast Wide SCSI-2 (20 *TV\«y - out, T i f Tbi» is rr\y w ork I ■folel you I Mb/s) C o " » roo*^• I keep ♦+■*« ;ol3ec*ed Tr-an.jfonr.rr Cornpu*-«rrs c*rvd d id n 't ] t -53C860: Fast-20 SCSI otH •*“ Village Qreen Special (Putt-out Section Issue 23 - ‘Page 2 ROM - which can be serial or flash, h ttp ://w w w . sab rin a - on line. com programmable in situ - this is mainly to help ignorant PCs boot from SCSI. It’s not clear if this will be needed for T h e o b lig a to ry A m ig a strip" AmigaOne - probably not if there’s room for a bootstrap loader in the ROM that configures PCI, but if not we should be able to put our own code in without much trouble. Do not confuse these with the old 5380 chips used in old Macs (and Emplant). These were very limited in speed and required host interventions for every SCSI phase change. The 53C90 (in Mac 2s) could get by with about half as much driver S a b r t n a Online 2000 "The tilvial tribute to Tatsuya" code as it had hardware arbitration for Ca*5« y o v u«r€» u o n d « r- common SCSI bus state changes, but it | <*^>3 w^ere Ay^y was still a‘dumb' chip reliant on r x o i interrupting the host whenever a decision needed to be made. Drivers for all the smart chips are very similar, and a lot shorter and simpler than the drivers for rival SCSI controllers, thanks to a (very) RISC ‘SCSI scripts’ processor which takes all the load of SCSI bus phase control off the main system, and the programmer of the driver:-) S a b r i n a Online by —~«200l “K lo sslc s o f k o m e d y " The SCSI scripts program and state machine works out whether we are handling commands or data, resolves contention and hard and soft errors, allowing drives to disconnect and reconnect so they don’t clog the bus while they perform internal operations, etc... The result is a driver that looks simple but handles all complicated cases implicitly, and takes multi-threading in its stride. mm! SCSI scripts are made of 64 or 96 bit RISC instructions read from the S a b r ^ n d Online byj&Aovc&ijp-—'*C2001 "Disregard all other accounts" host memory by DMA or from internal memory on later chips in the series. We don’t need to write a SCSI script program, though it may be useful - NCR’s standard ones cope with all the SCSI phases and types of transfer, and most implementations just use them and wrap host code around it to trap completion interrupts and set it off again. The 53C7xx and 53C8xx parts have a relatively tiny host overhead - between one and five per cent of that S a b r t n a Online by^ -02001 "inseducrHon” for a second-generation 53C90 - i w o re in cm eos/if*on*w«nf i ^ I d*a> qive *v>Y^clf fO: because once you’ve told it what to do wbe Village Qreen Special ‘Putt-out Section Issue 23 - Page 3 Anyhow, arbitrarily-sized blocks of effort into implementing it ourselves - but this should not be a priority. For the time data are moved to or from host memory by we should specify hardware and drivers being SCSI-direct meets the requirement PCI DMA and the only interrupt is at the that do not prevent it if we or third parties for those that understand and need it. As it end when the job - or a sequence of see value in the concept, later. is a low-level path into code that already transfers - is done, or if an error occurs in exists to implement more abstract I/O the meantime. Software issues operations, the cost of making it available You don’t /have/ to use DMA or is tiny, and we can build on it ourselves, SCSI scripts, though it is most efficient - The whole thing should be wrapped in for test purposes you can treat the for instance to extend third-party drivers whatever scheme we use for DMA device in an Amiga-general way. controller as an entirely dumb one and drivers, so we’re not committed to the peek and poke a byte at a time, which may Another neat trick possible with NCR family if something else comes SCSI-direct, as long as you know the be useful for a minimal bootstrap or along and we write fresh drivers for it. We support for sub-standard peripherals. topology of your system in a bit more have to support synchronous and async detail than device-independence allows, is It can do more than just read and I/O, and SCSI-direct (which is the Classic write the SCSI bus - as it has bidirectional Amiga scheme to allow any command to to program a drive to copy or mirror itself DMA you can use it as a be sent directly to any device in a host- to another. This can be done without host intervention (other than reselection when general-purpose block transfer device to independent way). The existing API is take the load off the CPU when moving fine, and hence any superset of it would it is done) as all SCSI devices - not just be, except that the late addition of data around main memory the host - can master the SCSI bus and QuicklO - where a device call may take or between motherboard RAM and video transfers can be between any two devices, place in the caller’s context, without without blocking processes of other RAM, let’s say. It can even do horizontal contextr switching to another handler or and vertical scrolling and window transfers, subject to well-defined and device driver task, and does not return till efficient priority and bus sharing operations, though you’d probably want complete - needs to be made a core, protocols. do this guaranteed part of the spec. QuicklO using the video card local CPU and bus in could have been very useful to address Horray for SCSI! Horray for SCSI practice:-) The memory move instruction complaints about the OS getting in the is stunningly simple, and way of dedicated high performance a good example of SCSI scripts. It’s 96 systems like multi-tracking, but wasn't bits long. The first byte is 192 (top two useful in old Amiga products since not all handlers and device drivers implemented bits set - these sift between four basic it and Commodore defined it as an option, RISC instruction groups). The rest of the not a requirement (so it was widely first (long) word is a 24 bit count of bytes ignored). This was a good idea which we to be moved The next two words are the should follow through. 32 bit source and destination addresses. SCSI-direct allows custom support The main limitation is that those must for new standard extensions, non-standard have the same byte alignment, as the chip or broken devices (like the NEC drives does 32 bit transfers, and tries to collect that interpret binary parameters as BCD! them in line bursts if appropriate. We 8-) by passing arbitrary SCSI commands don’t strictly need this, but if we were to to a device, and marsalling the results, in a make our driver offer this functionality to way that does not obstruct standard uses applications (with a hardware abstraction or sharing of the SCSI bus. SCSI-direct using the host processor or anything else allows specialist applications to use some appropriate if the SCSI copro is not of the SCSI features that are not available present) we would be making better use of PCI and our choice of hardware than any on IDE or other types of drive. For other non-embedded system instance a SCSI drive can be programmed Likewise our SCSI device should to search itself (with fields to skip and support the whole SCSI spec - not just check) and call any other device back transfers between SCSI devices and when it has found certain data. This memory, but between hosts sharing a bus - requires a command with no equivalent no problem as long as they have different for other types of devices, which would SCSI IDs - we should eschew cards that have to read all the data over the bus and fix the ID at 7 as it’s an avoidable check it with the main CPU. We could add limitation - and then they can all share CD this function to our API and do it the hard ROMs and other peripherals - even way for non-SCSI devices and cleverly for writable drives with careful (software) SCSI ones, but there is no need to make arbitration. And yes, I *know* this works, this a standard interface - as long as SCSI even on the old Amiga - I’ve seen Linux direct is available, programs for dedicated and AmigaOS sharing drives on a SCSI database or streaming applications can chain this way, and there’s a SCSI access the functionality without making networking example on Aminet that uses life more complicated for conventional SCSI direct commands to make a fast applications. parallel heterogenous drive and computer It would probably be worth adding cluster. There are other ways to do this - this, especially if SCSI takes off on Amiga Firewire, Ethernet, even USB at a pinch - or other drives (e.g. over ATAPI or and I don’t suggest that we should put firewire) offer equivalent functions, but Village Qreen Special(Pull-out SectiM Issue 23 - (Page 4 As Promised at the meeting. I am including some of the clip art images that are now on tne BBS for your collections These first ones are from GOODIES *4 These are from the These are from the Geos Icons Castles file album made by *30 © JULY 2001CH ISSUE JText Meeting 7pm on OM>OH5G 19/july/01ce at the 2 1 % jf Kibbutz. Got Coffee. j= ciS 3 Demos and Smokers Welcome e*»-j * n S '- ^ ^ -. rL ^ ^ — • “ J3 Q „ O H" >-• 1 M « S ,2'Ot*2. 3*. M ^ ‘ jj* Z’C L -i--- a 0 - / c * a ~*c 5 P P. £7 ^ 2 . n 5 ^ 0 ■ £ ° ^ ss ^ 3 0. 5 => & A .C .ir.G . *447 623 29th St. Astoria Ore. 97103 The Voice of the ACU.G JULY 2001CE ISSUE & £S>%> ' n„l,„ll„ll,„l„it,„lHl,la,.lil„,»„,l.!il.,l.l,..JIl
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